


fatalis.

by Modus_Mortis



Category: Original Work, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Conditioning, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, Gen, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow To Update, Tags May Change, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:53:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16031480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modus_Mortis/pseuds/Modus_Mortis
Summary: Here there be what is not born, but made. The stars are distant - there, but distant. Fate is at hand.[summary and tags may be subject to changes | a story for a character]





	1. prelude.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a backstory. I don't know how long it will take to finish since I have IRL matters to contend with, and chapter lengths may vary as I need to figure out how I'll divide this exactly, so in a way this first 'chapter' is more of a placeholder. As stated above, the summary and tags are subject to change - in particular, the tags will definitely be updated as more is written. Also trying to figure out formatting, please bear with me.
> 
> Please note: while this is listed under Boku no Hero Academia / My Hero Academia, it is only vaguely so and for the sake of context. You will find little reference (if any at all) to BNHA/MHA characters.
> 
> If the tags make you uncomfortable, please do not force yourself to continue.

It starts with an idea.  
  
It’s a brilliant one, perhaps. To be able to encompass countless forms and make even more, beyond that of this realm? A great asset indeed.  
  
At least, it would’ve been had they not reached the hundreds in failures. The number kept climbing and climbing - nothing was going right and before they knew it, they’ve gotten a warning. A warning of cancellation, after this last try. Allowing them to reach triple digits is ludicrous enough. With this, it’ll be quadruple, and that’s unacceptable.  
  
Once more. Live again.  
  
Up at the scientist gazes previously unseen eyes of distant stars, and relief drains away the stiff tension in all their spines like gravity’s pull. Countless, endless hours of work have finally come to this victory, small and quiet but there nonetheless. They can breathe without the weight of fear suspended down their throats, constricting their lungs - and what will come after?  
  
Such answers come in the form of congratulatory letters, all prim and blunt as government-written texts tend to be. They will care for what they made, and they will do it well. They will groom for what they made, and they will make it perfect.  


* * *

 

Tell them a story of what’s made in the dark, of what’s made under fluorescent light and metal tools. What’s quietly put together, broken apart, then rearranged - and repeat. What’s written into files that never see the sky, archives that are always deposited and never withdrawn, collecting dust past the end of times.

Tell them of what crawls and walks, slowly but surely, swathed in grayscale and nothing more. Tell them of what watches them from afar, what listens in silence and what nods to every command. Tell them of what never cries, cries, cries, only takes and gives without missing a beat until there is no more. Tell them of what has been hidden away. Tell them of what is inevitable. Tell them of what catches up.  
  
Tell them, tell them, tell them. 

Tell them everything.

Tell them what.

Tell them nothing.

Tell them a story.


	2. genesis.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how it begins with no name and only words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After much consideration over how I'll organize the chapters, I've decided to go for more on a chronological order centered on a particular 'theme,' or subject of a sort. I suppose that means that chapter lengths will vary heavily, hahaha.
> 
> As always, please consider the tags. I don't know how accurate I am in choosing them, but I prefer to stay safe about it.

The success is sickly.  
  
For all the talk of sterilization and hygiene in a lab setting, it’s inevitable that something will make its way into the air, hidden and malignant. It’s found its way to the success despite the measures they took ahead of time, has rendered it even quieter than before.   
  
It does not cry. It does not wail.   
  
Already, it’s docile and obedient. Any noises it makes are low in number, and illness makes it sluggish, easy to ignore outside of the necessary processes. They can listen to the breathing in the room, and the only reason why they know it’s there is because of how ragged it is, all clogged lung and stuffed throat. Some eye the twitching limbs with interest, because one does not get the chance to take such intimate logs on one of such a young age - not when the others didn’t live long enough for anything besides times of birth and death.   
  
However, a newborn’s body is a fragile thing. Do not sink into flesh so tender that it yields under the most careful of grips. Do not bring to malleable muscle cold, sharp steel. Do not grip soft bone until it collapses in with no warning but a final exhalation. Do not extinguish stars just formed.   
  
The scratches of pen on paper and clicks of keyboard fill the room for several days before monitors make their way to the success.   
  
As they work, they think. They find no fitting name for what they’ve created, and so it remains a nameless creature. Not like there is any need to call a name, with how it stays in one place for the following months, where it only sees white light and whiter lab coats. The sting of needles means a normalized nothing. Fever blocks out the force of manhandling. They find anomalous DNA that never stays still, and so it is called Mute by some, for its silence and mutations. The name doesn’t stick though; it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite right, so they fall back to vague gesticulation and pronouns without antecedents, like the whisper of any true name will have the subject whisked away forever. Mute arises every blue moon, only with the need for a placeholder before returning to nothingness once more. It comes to a point where a few play on how they know not a name, ‘nomen nescio.’ Something to never give, now given in a reference to how it isn’t, all contradiction and placeholder for eternity.   
  
Some days, they wonder if they can rouse sound.   
  
Everything but feed. All that comes of it is increased torpidity, decreased numbers. More force, then - and there are twitches, twists, the bright blossoming of stars, but only low gurgles.   
  
It takes an offhand comment, vocalized wonder, a murmur of “bad” that just happens to be in the same sentence as the subject. A whine rises from a delicate throat, wet hatchling breaking from the egg and fearful of the endless world.   
  
And they learn.   


* * *

  
it does not cry.   
  
eat when they give.   
  
so white, everywhere.   
  
hot hot hot, saved by water please more.   
  
hurts just so but remain.   
  
dark light dark light dark light.   
  
no no, it listens it is supposed to be well and okay can’t be bad no no no listen please it means nothing.   


* * *

  
Efforts go into speech.   
  
They recall files of providers, of one who spoke to warp reality in the most subtle of ways. They keep a few hands’ distance from its face as they speak to the rhythms of slow offerings, carefully taken in by younger eyes until petal lips attempt to emulate twists and curls; it makes sound now, but it’s garbled and useless and unfitting for anything. Babble means nothing but frustration for everybody involved, the goal of progress remains restraining reason.   
  
One word.   
  
Sing hymns of praise, bolster surprised starlight. Now, this is progress. Now, they can continue, continue past mere analyses and minor tests and begin to truly pull the hidden to exposure. Intrusive fingers - the rise of hard bone is a much anticipated coming, split through pink gums and bring discomfort until pearly white gleams brighter under whiter light.   
  
Here comes a thought, one that has only been distant until it’s been presented before them: can they induce faster growth? Or if not that, are there psychological methods to make fluency come easier?   
  
It can understand.   
  
Captive to what grows, not what is finished, it stumbles through syllable and vowel, unworthy of a spell. They go from layman to jargon; they talk to it like it can understand the workings of a body breaths away from becoming a cold corpse, the way the ribcage collapses and crushes its wards under enough pressure and just what happens as blood clogs the throat. Number upon number: one, two, thirty, four hundred, five thousand. Like talking to a machine that can’t talk back, it’ll take everything it’s given because there’s nothing else to take. Legends mean nothing when there is nothing above or below, and they are empty words with no power until months and months and months, to meet under skin and split it for scales.   
  
Letter by letter. English, first. The lingua franca of wide yet small world, touching all but several after journeys across the seas several times over. They wait until it runs to teach how to count. However, knowledge must have a firm foundation, and it must be made with a firmer hand.   


* * *

  
count them all.   
  
after they show line and curve they kneel before it. it blinks. nods. the idea of numbers. what exactly are they? why are they needed?   
  
one.   
  
sparks gather in its cheek. “one.” the - fingers, feel nice in hair.   
  
one. two. three.   
  
“two-” it’s a fire. it trembles. “three-” it burns. “five.”   
  
they’re going to do something different now.   
  
one. two.   
  
pause.   
  
one. two. three. four. five.   
  
the right side tingles more than the other. it’s quiet for almost too long. “ten.”   
  
the warmth feels different in its chest when they say something else. its lips are twitching up.   


* * *

At this point in time, they don’t have much to fear for this set of tests. Older, the body isn’t nearly as fragile as a newborn. There begins a back and forth, between the limits of flesh and the threshold of voice. Start small, change portions in increments by the day and observe, do not tarnish just yet; the tongue is clumsy and imperfect, but in quick time they will make refinery of it, no matter the age.

To present true names is a simple act. Start them young, and they’ll never have trouble with classification later. The sperm provider has used his voice as a primary function for his work, and they expect this subject to be similar.  
  
One may consider it ironic that the start is the _Gypaetus barbatus_ . As always, it read out what the designated supervisor presented to it, and all onlookers startled when feathers, dark like shadowed wood, sprouted from its arms. Whatever changes it may have had in previous sessions must have been minuscule, all under the surface and urges that it didn’t know to inform them of. Now, a bird for the dead has paved way for a new life of sorts, scavenge on what’s blossoming instead of what’s withering, trail feathers on cold panels and gently part lips for pale bone and rotten meat.   
  
They expect a sudden need for regurgitation, but it takes to the marrow in content silence. The meat, it seems to frown at for a moment, newfound ossifrage in disdain at the dark mush; it is obedient, it still chews as they ask.   
  
Time is taken on the side. All the while, they urge it to rest on its back on the metal table, actually caring to numb delicate skin before they dip inside, watch the corrosive workings of vulture’s stomach and extract the hot acid before one of them stitches everything back together like nothing has parted like stage curtains in the first place, silence in the theater. The glass container sizzles from the inside out - someone from main has to be called in, reinforce it before the fluid eats everything in its path.   
  
When it can move again, quieter than air as it moves across the room, it dares to tug at a lab coat’s hem, all pleading curiosity as it asks for the results, what they found out. For the trouble, they later feed harder and more putrid substances until it nearly faints, insides working overtime to eliminate human inedibles for the ossifrage side.   
  
It’s during this time that the term ‘aspect’ is attributed to the manifestations. They have yet to try anything else, too swept up in stranger tides to consider other routes just yet - but they can hypothesize, ponder as they pluck feathers and snap hollow bones, acquiesce to a subject’s interest in its own body with murmured narrations and praise whenever it keeps quiet, find that gentle strokes on its head will give impossibly more cooperation during the operations.   
  
Control of flight devices is next. Days pass before they can have a juvenile’s wings sprout from the back rather than the arms. The extra set of limbs leaves the subject confused, moving hand instead of wing and wing instead of hand, stumbling into tables and eating detritus for that. Tolerance increases, pleases them enough that they let it go a day without tests - only for it to protest with wide eyes, all twitching and ready to recite when it’s given the word to.   
  
The next day, they test flight. Arms first, better since it still teeters with the extra weight on its back. One with the ability to put back together the broken is there, for the shattered ribs and limbs with every failure. Succession comes near the end of the time limit, and they indulge in its urge to put together a nest: meager and pathetic, but it’s more than happy with the little home, expresses this with tiny, inadvertent chirps and pleased hums when they pet it.   
  
It comes to them being greeted with ready mouth and eager eyes at the start of their mornings, having learned how to be more proper come the manner-oriented texts. It does not ask for anything, and they learn to read the telltales for the sake of a content subject. The room only buzzes with machinery as one of them begins to schedule for more, binomial nomenclature all listed in meticulous order by alphabet, and they prepare.   
  
When they all leave for the night, it looks almost dejected, but it settles into the nest to await their returns.   


* * *

it learned a lot today. it’s happy about that, and even more that they’re doing more now. they showed it something that went through what they put it on top of, told it not to touch that, said it did good for making it. it’s not sure how it did, but they say it’s related to how it talked about the _Gypaetus barbatus_.  
  
it’s fond of it now. maybe they’ll let it read more about it later.   
  
they let it try flying, show it moving images - videos - of the ossifrage in the air. someone touched it every time it fell and something snapped. it should thank them if it sees them again.   
  
sometimes, they pull the feathers from it. pluck, that is. it feels funny, a bit of hurt but it’s not a lot, and it learns to ignore them as they do nice things with their fingers, chest all bubbly as they do it. they say that they have to do something with the broken parts too. bones. it can’t move them for a while, but they always fix it back up afterwards and then it’s all okay again.   
  
what they put in its mouth is either hard or soft. whenever it has the ossifrage, it likes the hard parts better. bone marrow, they say. the soft stuff makes it feel weird, something inside its head refusing but it fights that, eats it just like they say to and gets rewarded for that. they call this an aspect. eating this and flying. it whispers it sometimes to remember.   
  
it doesn’t like it much when they leave and it’s all dark. it’s okay with the dark but it’s alone there and it lies in the nest they let it make until they come back and make it all bright. so to show appreciation it tries to greet them like they do in the texts when they’re there, even tries smiling like the people in it do.   
  
they’re leaving again. they say bye to each other and the last one pets it on the head before they turn off the light.   
  
it goes back to the nest and waits.

**Author's Note:**

> Related to 'The Misadventures of the Powerhhful Agency!':
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/15923219/chapters/37122518


End file.
